WordPress 3.4 RC 1 has been released. Well over 500 tickets have been closed, so there’s plenty to look out for as you take out your testing sticks and knock it about. As before, this is not yet meant for live sites, though the adventurous amongst you may feel free to tempt fate, especially if you are a plugin or theme developer. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help. Also, I’d like to wish an extra special Happy Birthday to WordPress, which was released yesterday nine years ago!

The official WordPress.org Plugin Directory has received a rather significant redesign. With over 19,000 plugins listed, the team took some time to revisit this highly popular destination for the millions of folks using WordPress. Right off the bat, you should notice a new ability to to mark your preferred plugins as Favorites. Each plugin page now has a new Support tab populated with the plugins’s support thread, and a super-handy chart showing you the resolved vs. open thread count so you can see at a glance how well supported a plugin is. Finally, there is much more focus on the authors this time around and some improved styling over all. What do you think of the newly redesigned plugin directory?

Code Poet has just relaunched, and it is now so much more than the directory of WordPress professionals that it was before. If you build anything with WordPress, Code Poet is now on the fast track to be your one stop shop for resources and information. Today, Code Poet features free eBooks from WordPress professionals, interviews with WordPress professionals, useful resources from the WordPress community, and a handy quiz to test your WordPress knowledge. As you can imagine, Code Poet is gearing up to be a massive resource build by WordPress professionals for WordPress professionals and aspiring power users. If you’re still looking to hire someone, the Code Poet Directory still exists, and aspiring Code Poets can still apply to be part of the prestigious directory. Head over to the new Code Poet, grab a free eBook for the road, and take the quiz right away. How did you do […]

The WordPress core team is pulling out all the stops this year and shooting for a big summit to be attended by prominent contributors and community members. Instead of the traditional meet up, which is typically attended by only the core developers and their chosen guests, the core team is now looking for your nominations to decide who will attend the first ever WordPress Community Summit. The Summit will allow the core developers to get to work with the best and brightest of the WordPress community (support forum volunteers, the Theme Review Team, volunteer documentation editors, community organizers, theme shops, etc.), and who knows what amazing things they’ll come up with when they put their heads together! If you have any favorite community members or companies, even that lone support forum volunteer who rescued your blog, make sure that you leave a nomination for them right away. Sure, you can nominate […]

WordPress 3.4 will ship with a powerful theme customizer to make alternations to some of the most basic aspects of any theme without even affecting your live site while you tinker. It’s a very fascinating tool, and WordPress superstar Samuel “Otto” Wood has created this short video highlighting some of its features. Now that you’ve seen the video, head on over to Otto’s incredibly detailed post on how to bring support for the new customizer into your own themes.

WordPress 3.4 Beta 4 has been released, with quite possibly the most brief, and yet most simply descriptive, release announcement yet. I’ll take the liberty of forever preserving it below in all its glory: Less bugs, more polish, the same beta disclaimers. Download, test, report bugs. Thanks much. /ryan #thewholebrevitything So, let’s break that down just a bit in case you’re not yet familiar with what’s going on. First, WordPress 3.4 Beta 4 has less bugs and is a bit snappier and cleaner than the previous beta releases, but the same disclaimers are still valid. This is not yet meant for live sites, but please do take a few swings at it on a test installation, especially if you are a plugin or theme developer. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help.

WordPress 3.3.2 and 3.4 Beta 3 have been released. This important security update plugs exploits in Plupload, SWFUpload, and SWFObject (three external libraries used by WordPress), as well as a few additional fixes. WordPress 3.4 Beta 3 is still not ready for prime time, but provides almost 90 fixes since the second beta release. Please do take a few swings at it on a test installation, especially if you are a plugin or theme developer. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help. If you’re currently running on the WordPress 3.3 branch, please update to 3.3.2 as soon as you can!

We already know that WordPress powers about 19% of the web and 48 of the top 100 blogs, and now Joost de Valk has taken that a step further with this amazing infographic. Some cool stats worth mentioning: WordPress powers 72.4 million websites as of March 2012 with half of those being on WordPress.com, an estimated 20 – 25% of new websites published in 2011 were built using WordPress, WordPress powers 22 of every 100 new domains created in the US, and WordPress corners 53.8% of the market when compared to other content management systems. The infographic is definitely worth a quick look through, and perhaps even framing and hanging on a prominent wall in your main room.

According to a study by Pingdom, WordPress is now responsible for powering 48 of the top 100 blogs! We already know that WordPress powers about 19% of the web, but now we know just how well it fares as a blogging platform in general. Pretty well, that is! Out of the top 100 blogs surveyed, WordPress is just 1 of 12 platforms used, and it’s powering 48 of the them! As a comparison, the next highest result were the 12 blogs running on a custom platform, followed by 8 who declined to comment, and finally 7 running Movable Type. Yes, you read that right. Of the mainstream blogging platforms used by the top 100, WordPress comes in first with 48, followed by Movable Type with 7. That’s quite a substantial lead! Matt Mullenweg expects an even higher adoption rate for WordPress next year, and with these numbers, it’s hard to […]

About the Author

James

James began using WordPress in 2004. Being new to WordPress (and blogging in general), he quickly found the WordPress Support Forums and basically never left. James currently resides in sunny Southern California, where he enjoys bringing happiness to millions of WordPress.com users.